Two hours of video covers over a century of history of sound art

And hello, spring semester. Here’s an exhaustive (and fascinating) lecture on the history of sound art – by a philosopher.

Philosopher Christoph Cox traces the history of sound art from the invention of audio recording in the late 19th century to the genre-bending compositions of John Cage to the explosion of sound installation in the 1960s. Cox surveys a range of sonic practices, revealing how they resemble and resist approaches in the visual arts.

The film comes to us from the Barnes Foundation, the superb arts institution in Philadelphia.